Diary

Mileage:  134 miles

Elevation Change:  4882 feet

Weather: cool and cloudy in the morning, hot and sunny in the afternoon

Morale:  happy but tired

Incidents: 2 days with no flat tires!

Daily Summary:

What a glorious day!  How often do you get to bicycle the length of both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks on a picture perfect day?  Today was definitely a highlight!

 

Last night we stayed up a bit later than usual as there was a free outdoor concert in the park right next to our hotel room.  We hung out on the grass with the locals listening to a band from Bozeman play a mix of classic rock and country. It was a lot of fun, but it meant that the 6am breakfast seemed pretty early. 

 

We were on the road by 6:40am, and went right into Yellowstone.  We rode with two other cyclists from our group for the day.  We cycled down to Old Faithful, which was spouting as we were cycling toward it, but had finished by the time we got there.  We didn’t want to wait an hour or more for it to pop again.  We crossed the Continental Divide three times in Yellowstone, saw the steaming pools in the early morning light, saw lots of cool wildlife, and just loved the ride.  We cycled out of Yellowstone and into Teton just around lunchtime, so stopped at a restaurant to eat.  We got back on the road and started up pretty quickly—a bit too quickly.  Raymond had a low point and had to take a break by the side of the road for ten minutes or so.  He came back stronger than ever, and we had a breathtakingly beautiful ride through the park.  We got back to the hotel around 4, very tired but very happy.  

 

This evening we had the special treat of going out to dinner with some friends who live here.  Andrea and John were in Paris at Thanksgiving and I spent the day with them on bikes, riding out to Versailles for a nice lunch.  They took good care of us tonight in Jackson, taking us out to a great restaurant and trying to convince us to come work for John, shuttling cars up and down the river (by bicycle) for all the fisherman on the river.  Sounds fun!

 

Tomorrow is a relatively short day (117 miles) down to Montpelier, Idaho.  We need to get to bed!

 

Below you see Lil in front of Old Faithful.  Next Raymond leads the paceline towards the Tetons.  We crossed the divide three times today, the highest at 8500 feet.  Next is Ray and Lil at the last stop, 20 miles from Jackson.  Finally, some of our great scenery of the day.